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Will new CUE system in the 2013 Cadillac XTS please or frustrate

Every new 2013 Cadillac XTS will come with an iPAD to augment the customer user experience, but lacks a nephew to operate it

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Define the demographic of the average Cadillac XTS buyer. Keep in mind this Cadillac is not the hot-shoe CTS-V coupe designed for affluent muscle car buyers. Nor is it the new ATS compact sedan designed to go head to head with brainy BMW 3-series shoppers. No, this Cadillac is the huge one with front wheel drive. Cadillac wants this car to be rear-wheel drive, but the platform for that won’t be ready until 2015 or later. This Cadillac seems to be the one the older shopper might choose for luxury and comfort. Will that buyer be excited to see that to use their new car they need to use an iPAD? The recent Ford MyFord Touch experience trying too much technology too fast proved frustrating even for the tech savvy demographic it wisely launched its system to in its hip and inexpensive sub-compact cars.

To Support CUE
The support system Cadillac is building to support CUE seems ominous:
- Every new Cadillac CUE owner will receive a phone call that establishes for them a personal contact to help them with any questions.
- The people at ON-Start now have CUE experts available to them. This sounds like “Hold on and I will transfer you to the person who knows about that…”
- Each Cadillac dealership now has a (not every salesperson but rather “a”) technology expert to help explain to its buyers where to locate the “Any” key.
- Twenty five new CUE experts are being deployed nationwide to support those technology experts.
- Cadillac’s existing “customer assistant services” employees are trained to support CUE questions.
- The HQ for the infotainment support on Cadillacs is ready to help in the event of a CUE-tastrophy.

Call the Expert
As you read over this list of incredible support being offered, do you have a good feeling that the system will improve your life? Are you secretly telling yourself that if you can’t figure out how to turn on the radio you would call your 14 year old nephew who “Is good at computers?” Cadillac's press release on this system seems to expect confusion.

Test Drive Your What?
Setting aside whether or not the buyer wants this much infotainment, here are two novel things that the CUE system includes as part of the ownership experience:
- Using an App (What’s an App? Are they heavy?) the new CUE owner can “test-drive” their Cadillac, I mean their CUE, on their iPAD.
- Each new iPAD that the buyer receives with their XTS has 3 Apps already loaded: One for CUE, one for OnStar, and a third for OnStar Remote Link. I would say that is about 3 more apps than the average seasoned citizen uses each day.

This author is a fan of Cadillac, but he hopes that Cadillac sets up a Pay-pal program to compensate grandchildren and nieces worldwide who will likely be the actual IT support for this new computer that comes with a car.